The trend in wireless mobile radiotelephone communication devices is to provide more and more data services. These services can include web browsing, e-mail, downloading files, multi-media streaming, Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services, real-time gaming, and the like. These data services are in addition to the normal voice traffic available with the radiotelephone. However, these different voice and data applications require different communications capabilities. As a result, these applications may provide a different performance as perceived by each user depending upon the application being used, the mobile device of the user, and the current bearer network for the device. This can be a problem when users share an application over the network, such as multi-user gaming, wherein one user may have an advantage in application response time over another user, for example. It would be beneficial for a network operator to know the condition or performance available for a particular application for each mobile device such that resources can be properly allocated depending upon the use application.
Current resource allocation mechanisms for applications on cellular networks are based on scheduling algorithms that are network-centric; they are based in resource schedulers that allocate resources to optimize network utilization. However, these mechanisms do not permit application and content providers to observe, modify and optimize the performance characteristics of their distributed applications on heterogeneous networks and heterogeneous devices which may span multiple technologies and networks from different operators (e.g. UMTS, GSM, GPRS/EDGE, IEEE 802.xx). In addition, these mechanisms do not address the changing of resource requests from the mobile or connecting an application level of performance (i.e. QoS) with device management.
What is needed is a technique for a network operator or application or content provider to know the condition or performance available for particular use application for a mobile device such that network resources can be properly allocated depending upon the use application.